Bird Songs (for the New Year)

I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.  —E.E.Cummings

It’s a new year…….the fires have abated, the hurricanes have been left to gestate in the oceans, the rain has finally arrived, the air has cleared, and the song of birds can be heard once again.

Bird Songs

They sing about their lives on the water. Warbling, chirping, and chatter float through the canyons and trees, waking up the morning.

As the old Gospel song proclaims, hope can be found by keeping your eye on the sparrow,

that small bird that gains strength from the flock as it belts out tunes of joy and freedom.

But what about the winter when breath stands still and frost fills the air—do they grow more feathers—do their feet freeze—are their nests caked in ice—do their songs retreat into the darkness waiting for the Earth to tilt closer to the sun?

The answer might lie in the origin of song—simple sounds for gossip, courtship, and danger,

bringing order to random cacophony, harmony to the orchestration of nature.

Charlie Parker, Jerry Garcia, and Mahalia Jackson conjured birds in their music, bringing notes to the scattered sounds of rapture and relief—

flight captured on keys, beaks bopping the bass. They joined the birds on the branches to record the passing winter, and the birth of better days.

Bird Song Notes: 

“Bird Song” by Jerry Garcia (for Janis Joplin)

Charlie Parker “Bird” 

(melodic lines like birdsong)

Mahalia Jackson “His Eye on the Sparrow” (Special Grammy Award 2010)

Timbre—The Color of Sound

Timbre—the distinguishable characteristics of a tone that make one sound different from another even if they have the same pitch and intensity.

 As the days become shorter and slide into winter
we become aware of a new palette of sounds
and take time to slow down and listen.

Vessel #54—Timbre                                      The Rollright Stones, Warwickshire, England

Winter solitude—in a world of one color—the sound of wind

                                                                        —Matsuo Basho, 1691 

  

Sonata (for Apples in C# Minor)

“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with them. The people who give you their food—give you their heart.”    —Cesar Chavez, Co-founder United Farm Workers Union

“This isn’t just about cooking and eating. It’s about culture and politics. If people everywhere could just understand one another a little bit better, sit down over a meal together, you could solve a lot of problems.”         —Ben Rhodes, Former Deputy National Security Advisor to Barak Obama

In a couple of weeks we will be sitting down for Thanksgiving dinner. As kids we attended these gatherings with an air of anticipation and dread. There was the plump shiny turkey to be devoured along with more food than we could comprehend, but there was also “Uncle Billie” with his inappropriate jokes, crazy worldview, and unbearable aftershave.

But we were “breaking bread”—sitting down with friends, relatives, and sometimes unexpected quests who came from diverse backgrounds and held thoughts and opinions that we found untenable. Our task was to listen without passing judgment—sometimes harder to do than walk on hot coals.

So Happy Thanksgiving—share those yams and drumsticks, practice tolerance with Uncle Billie, and give some time to those less fortunate…As J.R.R. Tolkien said, “If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.” 

Fugue—Listen to the Music

October 10 was World Mental Health Day. The goal was to call attention to the growing problem of mental illness throughout the world, and offer solutions to help people in distress. The stigma of mental health issues, lack of education and awareness, and funding cutbacks for programs all contribute to the mental health treatment gap.

• One in four adults and one in ten children worldwide will be affected by a mental or neurological disorder at some point in their lives.

• In the United States one in five adults and youth experience some form of mental illness each year. More than half do not receive mental health treatment.        

                                        —Statistics: World Health Organization, National Alliance on Mental Illness

“At the root of this dilemma is the way we view mental health in this country. Whether it affects your heart, your leg or your brain, it’s still an illness and there should be no distinction.”      —Michelle Obama

Fugue, from the Latin fuga for flight, is a word with multiple meanings. In psychological terms it refers to a dissociative mental state characterized by loss of memory. On the street it refers to an altered state of reality caused by ingesting drugs or too much alcohol—and in musical terms it is a composition where a theme is introduced and then repeated as if it were flying around the scale. 

Fugue by Jeff Key
Twilight—
Crimson numbers flash.
Boards blink. Metal rows run and trip. Melancholy whispering ebbs and flows with the solstice sky.

Laughter can be heard in a meadow below a crested bluff—an incongruous rumble, rising and falling on the cusp of an undaunted evening.

It is a night like none other.
It is a night like any other

full of transgression, collapsing inward in order to stem the wilting malaise of branches with no timbre.

Leaves—syncopated with the early rustling of the stars cut into fragments marking the cross between bolted doors and the waning moon.

Tents blow down by the river trapping tales of hoodwinked drifters shifting beneath blankets of mottled deceit. To live for another day under the torrent  of hollow contrivance becomes the strength of a white-washed vision.

A newborn wakes in the thalo light, bottled with a nascent longing  for the arc of a swinging limb as it pivots with the torque required to capture the luminous twist of side-stepping dance.

It is a day like none other.
It is a day like any other

• The 2019 US Fiscal Year Budget calls for a 21% decrease for the Dept. of Health and Human Services—a $600 million cut to Mental Health and Substance Abuse Treatment programs, eliminating $451 million in training programs for the health professions, and a $1.4 trillion cut to Medicaid (over 10 years).

What can we do to help alleviate these problems—

• Write to our current legislators and urge them to vote for more funding for mental health programs. • Vote in November to elect local, state, and federal officials who will work to amend or overturn the proposed budget cuts.